Unnatural Minds
by Flames101
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid meets an unusual man on his weekend vacation and soon finds himself indebted to him. Dean Winchester doesn't know what it is about Spencer Reid that has him telling him all his secrets, but he does. An unlikely friendship forms between the two opposite men. Written for the CCOAC Crossover Challenge. Not Slash.


**A/N:** Hey all! This story will be my first ever attempt at a crossover fic (also my first attempt writing Supernatural). It was written for the CCOAC forum Crossover challenge. My chosen show to crossover with Criminal Minds was Supernatural and my chosen character was Dean Winchester. My assigned character from the CM fandom is Reid. This will not be a slash story, so sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping. It will, hopefully, be a friendship piece—I'm still debating whether I want to take it further than this one chapter. Anyways, let me know what you think. Thanks!

*** * Update (Oct16/12): As of right now, this story is complete. I'm still toying with ideas to continue it, but for now consider it done.**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any of the characters from Supernatural or Criminal Minds.

**Chapter 1:**

* * *

_**~ 2005 ~**_

"Wh—What happened… to her?" Spencer stuttered out, as he strained his neck to assess his current situation—predicament was more like it.

He'd always trusted in what his eyes showed him, that and the facts. But right now, both were telling him to believe in the impossible.

"She… she was… alive… and then…" Somewhere deep inside he knew he was in a state of shock. He knew that he needed to close his mouth; take a couple of deep breaths and things would start to make sense again. But he couldn't, shut his mouth, that is. He just kept babbling on. His mouth, for once, way ahead of his brain.

How he'd gotten to this point, tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, he couldn't remember.

"Hey man," a gruff voice penetrated his thoughts. "Just calm down."

Spencer looked up at the face of a man when his view of April, slumped over—also tied to a chair—had been blocked. _Dean Winchester._ The man he'd met just a couple of days ago. What was he doing here?

"Black smoke… black smoke," he repeated, shaking his head. And then he suddenly burst out, "You tied me to a chair!"

Dean chuckled mirthlessly at that. "Well, you tried to hit me over the head with your laptop, so I'd say we're about even."

The man moved behind him, once again affording him the gruesome view of his unconscious—he couldn't allow himself to think dead—friend. Blood dripped from her nose; her blonde bangs covered her bright blue eyes, which he knew to be surrounded by deep purple splotches. Those were the same eyes he'd enjoyed looking into. His friend, his best childhood friend, was dead. How the hell did that happen?

Spencer took a moment, reliving the events of the past few weeks. April had called him three weeks ago today, calling him out on his MIA-ness. They'd made plans to visit each other. And so, just two weeks later they'd met in a restaurant in a small town, Cherry Hill, halfway between Quantico, where he was now working and New York, where April had been teaching.

He'd had every intention of telling his longtime friend, and crush, how he felt about her, but upon meeting, it was clear to Spencer that something was off about April. And everything just went wrong after that. But it was hard to figure out how all that led to black smoke spewing out of the April's mouth.

"There," Dean said from behind him. Spencer made no move to speak or even move, he just kept staring at the girl who'd made high school bearable for him. Dead.

_Dead?_

"Spencer," Dean tried again, coming around to face him, once again blocking his view. "I cut you loose. You're free to go…"

Spencer shook his head, trying to regain his bearings. _April was dead… _

Dean was suddenly at his side, helping him stand up.

"Geesh, I must have hit you harder than I thought," Dean muttered to himself.

"You hit me!" Spencer echoed accusatorily.

It was coming back to him; they'd been… somewhere, he couldn't remember where exactly, arguing. Dean had said something that had made him pretty angry, angry enough to pick up his laptop and take a swing at the leather-jacket clad man. And then Dean was taking a swing at him. He'd woken up sometime later, here in this warehouse, tied to a chair. Sitting across from him sat an equally trussed up, fuming April.

For a few scary minutes after he'd woken up, he'd thought he'd stumbled into one of his cases, only playing the victim this time. He didn't know Dean all that well. It was perfectly plausible, considering the circumstances, that the man could be a serial killer. He certainly had a few suspicious qualities that he'd profiled on their earlier meetings—loner, travelled a lot, had a lot of guns. But then, there'd words in Latin, words he understood, words strung together that were so dated and impossible… and then the black smoke. And he knew he was dealing with something… unnatural.

Once it seemed like he could stand on his own two feet, Dean stepped away from him unceremoniously. Spencer wobbled a bit, but managed to stay upright.

"Yeah, well, you were getting in the way, genius-boy," Dean replied, annoyed.

He cringed at the teasing name Dean had taken to calling him once he'd made the mistake of mentioning he was a doctor. He was about to retort with an eloquent, "Shut up," but Dean wasn't finished talking.

"You got to get out of here." His companion gestured for him to go.

And he would have, too, but Dean was forgetting one thing. He stumbled forwards, trying to get to April. Dean caught him, held him back. "Don't, man, she's gone…"

Reid met the strange man's gaze—hunter, demon hunter, that's what he'd called himself when they'd been arguing. He looked sad, but there was also a hard shimmer to those eyes. Spencer got the feeling that these were the eyes of a person who had seen a lot of death and had become jaded because of it.

Well, so had he, but he wasn't about to become indifferent to death, and he certainly wasn't about to leave April, like that.

He shoved Dean away with as much strength as he could muster, considering he probably had a concussion and stumbled towards his old friend.

Spencer knelt in front of her prone body. He reached a hand up and shakily checked for a pulse. There wasn't one. "Oh God," he moaned. His hand went to cup her face, his other pushed at the bangs that fell across her eyes. Those pretty blue eyes stared back at him unseeingly. He couldn't stand it; gently, he used the tips of his fingers to close them. She would have looked like she was just sleeping now, if it wasn't for how battered she suddenly looked.

It didn't make sense for her to look that way. She'd been unscathed moments before the black smoke came pouring out of her mouth, and Dean hadn't touched her, wouldn't even go near her. He couldn't understand why she looked so beaten up.

"How… how did this happen?"

"I told you," Dean replied.

Spencer glared at him over his shoulder. "You told me she was possessed by a demon."

His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders. "She was."

He shook his head, turning to look back at the hunter. "That's not possible. Demons aren't real."

"After what I told you, after what you just saw, you're really going to go with that?" Dean scoffed angrily. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius, genius-boy?"

_The black smoke._ No matter how hard he tried to, he couldn't get that image out of his mind. It had come out of her mouth. For all his logic, he could not come up with a reasonable explanation for what that smoke had been. _But demons?_

With one last look at April, he stood up. "We've got to call the police. We've got to tell her parents… what happened," he choked on the words. What would they tell them?

Dean walked over and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "Spencer, April was possessed by a demon. I just sent that son of a bitch straight back to hell. But it was too late; too much damage was already done. She's gone."

"A demon?" Spencer said unsurely. "Why?"

"Why what?" Dean looked at him as if he were a complete mental case.

"Why'd they do this to her?"

"Because they're sick, because they get off on messing with us," Dean replied adamantly.

All Spencer could do was nod his head. None of it made any sense. _Why April? Why now? Could demons be as random as Dean said they were?_

"What are we going to do now?" he asked, shocked by how small his voice sounded.

Dean gestured between them. "_We_ aren't going to do anything. You're going to go back to wherever you came from—"

"Quantico, Virginia," he interrupted.

"Right, Quantico," Dean echoed, the name sounding foreign on his lips. "And I'll clean up this mess. It's what I do. Now… go."

With one last look at April, he nodded his head at Dean, turning to go. He paused by the door briefly. "Th… thank you…"

Looking uncomfortable, Dean nodded his head once in acknowledgement and then Spencer left.

* * *

Dean swung his bag over his shoulder as he took one last look around his motel room, making sure he'd left nothing behind. He couldn't wait to get the heck out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey and back on the road. This job had been a bit of a detour on his search for his dad. And he was ready to put all his time and energy into that instead of saving genius-boys from demon-possessed girlfriends.

Running a hand through his blonde strands, he suddenly thought about the young doctor who couldn't have been much older than his own brother. He could tell that Spencer Reid had had a tough go of things in life and this wasn't going to make things any easier for him. He'd just met the kid, but there was something about him that he just couldn't shake from his thoughts.

Letting out a sigh, he told himself he'd have to, because he probably wasn't going to see him again. And there were more important things to get done, like getting his brother and continuing the search for their missing father. That was priority.

He left the room and headed towards the front desk to drop off the key. When he turned back to the parking lot, a few steps towards his car, he could see that his pride and joy wasn't alone.

"Dr. Reid," he greeted formally, looking at the younger man incredulously. Just what was he doing here, he did not know. Most of the people Dean had saved wanted nothing to do with him afterwards. This kid had even thanked him. Dean was getting the impression that Spencer wasn't most people.

"Spencer," the genius automatically corrected, going silent.

Dean realized that Spencer might actually fall in the smaller percentage of people's asses he'd saved. The ones who actually wanted answers. He let out a sigh, walking past him; he opened the passenger door, tossed his bag inside and turned around to lean against his car, arms crossed over his chest.

"So," he began expectantly, "What do you want to know?"

"You're a hunter?" Spencer began tentatively. "You hunt… demons?"

"Among other things," Dean answered casually.

Spencer's eyes widened behind his round glasses. "Other things?"

"Listen," Dean began uncrossing his arms to hold them to either side of him. "There are things out there… all those ghost stories, myths and legends, they're real. And they hurt every day, average Joe's like yourself."

"And you… hunt them down… for nothing…"

The kid seemed to be trying to get his head around this. Considering he was probably a scientist, he was doing a good job of it.

"Someone's got to do it," he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

He was shaking his head at him now. "You say it like it's nothing… It's not nothing… you lost someone, didn't you… to a demon or a… Super…natural being… that's why you do this?"

Dean shook his head, wondering how they'd gotten from talking about _what_ he was to _why_ he did what he did. Figures the genius would be two jumps ahead of him. However they'd gotten to this point in the conversation he was in no mood to discuss how his mother died.

"Why are you here, Spencer?" he asked instead.

He didn't answer right away; he fished around in his pocket for something, instead. And then he was holding out his business card to Dean. He took it from Spencer's hand without looking at it.

"No offense, Spencer, but hunters don't really need accountants," he told him dryly.

"I wanted to see what you'd do with April…" Spencer began. "If you'd treat her right…"

Dean winced at that. He'd driven the girl's body to a hospital, claiming she'd been hit by a car and then ran. He was sure her injuries would be consistent with his claim. Demons never took it easy on their meat-suits.

"I wanted to see if you're a good guy… you know, see if you'd demand payment or something… before I gave you that," Spencer finished.

"Well, it's nice to see that I passed the test," Dean said wryly. "I still don't need—"

"Dean," the doctor interrupted. "Look at the card."

Making a show of it, Dean glanced at the card:

_Dr. Spencer Reid, Behavioral Analysis Unit, Federal Bureau of Intelligence._

He had to read it again, before he looked up at Reid. "FBI? Are you kidding me?"

Spencer shook his head. "Nope. That's me."

Dean nodded, taking in the sight of the gangly, young man as he wondered to himself, _They let this kid carry a gun?_

"So," he said instead of voicing his thoughts, "What's this for?"

It was Reid's turn to shrug his shoulders. "Seems like your job comes with a lot of hazards, and I'm guessing you don't get paid…so this is for… emergencies."

Dean pocketed the card, not sure if he'd ever use it; he still wasn't going to pass up a favor from an FBI agent either. "Thanks."

He made his way to the driver's side of the car.

"Wait," Spencer called out. Dean paused at the door. "That's it?"

"What, you want a hug?"

"No," he replied scowling. "I just… what if I need to contact you?"

Dean chuckled. "Trust me, you won't."

And then he got into his car and drove away, leaving the genius-boy in his wake. Sure he'd never see him again.

* * *

Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed. And I hope you'll let me know what you think. Thanks!


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